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Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Herman Melville

Start date: June 1, 2023

Finish date: July 1, 2023

Discussion: Old School Classics, Pre-1915

Why we're reading this: Revisit the Shelf June 2023

2nd Quarter Long Read 2017

Previous Group Reads:
Book of the Month, December 20…more
[close] Revisit the Shelf June 2023

2nd Quarter Long Read 2017

Previous Group Reads:
Book of the Month, December 2010
Revisit the Shelf Group Read, March 2014

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Old School Classics, Pre-1915

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What Members Thought

Sep 15, 2012 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, read-2013, mtbr-challenge-2013, e-books, fiction-19th-century, american-fiction, kindle, audio-books, animals

I won't miss this one. Also available at iTunes for download and podcasts.

As stated by the Moby Dick Big Read project, Moby-Dick is the great American novel. But it is also the great unread American novel.

This is quite comprehensive, that's why I decided to join Hayes and some other friends in this interesting project which provided a chapter per day from the period of September 15 2012 to January 29 2013. An international body of artwork had accompanied each chapter, a quite huge project which ...more

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Jan 10, 2016 Tom Britz rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This was not an easy read. It was part encyclopedia, zoology lesson as well as anatomy (whale). When the story moved it was a fun and absorbing read. I was pleasantly surprised at the humor which helped move the story. If this book was published today it would be about 200 pages thinner.

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Jan 02, 2017 Kai Coates rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Finishing Moby Dick feels like I've reached a milestone in my quest to be "well read". It is unabashedly one of the great American novels (some argue the greatest - I'm not one of them) and left us with the indelible character of Captain Ahab. What surprised me while reading it was it's modernity - Melville bounces around between varying types of prose and decides to virtually dump Ishmael as the narrator 1/4 of the way through. His writing is gorgeous - even the long, tedious bits are full of s ...more

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Apr 05, 2014 Maggie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, adventure, fiction, boxall-1001, guardian-1000, usa

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. “Call me Ishmael”, and so it begins. Ishmael decides to join a whaling ship, and with his newly met tribal friend, Queequeg, he joins the Pequod, a ship captained by the monomaniacal (as Melville repeatedly describes him) Ahab. Ahab wears a prosthetic leg for his leg was once destroyed by the sperm whale Moby Dick, and he spends the next three years on a quest to hunt and kill Moby Dick. We never meet Moby Dick until the end of the book, but Melville speaking through Ishmael uses the better part “Call me Ishmael”, and so it begins. Ishmael decides to join a whaling ship, and with his newly met tribal friend, Queequeg, he joins the Pequod, a ship captained by the monomaniacal (as Melville repeatedly describes him) Ahab. Ahab wears a prosthetic leg for his leg was once destroyed by the sperm whale Moby Dick, and he spends the next three years on a quest to hunt and kill Moby Dick. We never meet Moby Dick until the end of the book, but Melville speaking through Ishmael uses the better part of the book describing the majesty of the sperm whale, the process of whaling, and various incidents on a whaling journey. Throughout, there is a sense of foreboding, as Ahab drives his crew on with his charisma despite it becoming increasingly clear that the ship stands little chance against Moby Dick. But Ahab is bent on his purpose, and they find Moby Dick, and everything happens as we expect. All are killed, with only Ishmael surviving to tell the tale.

This book is replete with themes. There is the theme of majesty – the majesty of the sperm whale, with his size and power, to the point that he is elevated to almost god-like status by Ishmael, and the the majesty of the sea, with its hidden depths and vast mysteries. There is the theme of choice and fate – does Ahab pursue Moby Dick by choice or is it fate that drives him to his senseless end? There is theme of civility versus paganism, embodied in the Pequod’s multinational crew that includes white Americans, Indians and tribal people, amongst others, with uncivilised Queequeg often idealised as more honourable and selfless than the civilised men. There is the theme of religion, with Melville criticising the hypocrisies of Christians, aligning Ahab with the devil, and scattering his pages with names from the Old Testament.

Yes, Melville’s messages of the futility of obsessions and the inferiority of man to God are clear, but I wish he would convey these messages in a more enjoyable way. I mean, it’s not that I hated the book. I enjoyed the passages describing the whale, because much as they deviated from the action, they conveyed Melville’s passion for whales, and were educational in a compelling way. I enjoyed too the interactions between the characters. The personalities in this book are diverse, from madmen like Ahab to sensible Christian men like Starbuck to happy-go-lucky comic characters like Stubb to pitifully insane characters like Pip, and it was interesting seeing how these characters interacted with one another when thrown together. I especially enjoyed the Pequod’s gams with other ships, and the comparisons inevitably drawn between the Ahab’s objectives and character and those of the other ships’ captains.

But I believe Melville’s greatest shortcoming lay in the fact that he tried too hard for grandiosity. He wanted this to be an epic. As the main subject of the text, the sperm whale’s immensity couldn’t have been emphasised more. The story covered geographical vastness, and hinted at unfathomable ocean depths. The whale was covered from etymological, cetological, anatomical, phrenological, historical and artistic perspectives, just to name a few. There was lots of name-dropping going on, with people like Alexander, Hannibal, biblical characters, kings, sultans and famous navigators mentioned. There were mountains and forests and ruins and wars. Melville’s point was clear – the whale is grand, and he wanted this to be a grand novel. But he couldn’t pull it off coherently, and everything became an overwhelming mess. His language was so verbose that I had to read it slowly to understand it, and yet I didn’t have the patience or interest to muster the energy required to make sense of his writing. I could see Melville’s passion in his subject, but his passion was over-the-top.

I was a little disappointed. I gave The Scarlet Letter 5 stars when I read it last year, and I knew that Melville was influenced by Nathaniel Hawthorne, so I expected to enjoy this more than I did. I’m glad I read it, but only because it is so widely recognised as a classic that I had to experience it for myself. ...more

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Aug 12, 2015 Nola Tillman rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books-to-read, classics, fiction-drama, fiction-action-adventure

I had a difficult time with this, I'll admit. The beginning and end both drew me in, but the middle dragged on and on. There were some points of writing I truly enjoyed in the midst, but overall I felt nearly driven to madness myself. And Moby Dick, that vicious b*stard, took forever to appear. When I hit page 500 and still hadn't spotted him - in a 535-page novel - I was ready to slay him myself. Even Ahab only puts in a passing appearance through most of the middle.
In truth, some of what we le ...more

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